The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, October 26, 2012

Read the article in Italiano (translated by Yehudit Weisz, edited by Angelo Pezzana)

On the sixth of October, the anniversary of the Yom Kipur War, the Saudi Arabian Internet site "Arab News" published an article by the Saudi publicist Abdulateef al-Mulhim in which he claims that Israel is not the Arabs' enemy number one; rather, it is dictators, ignorance, neglect and corruption. The article caused a wave of protest in the Arab world, but also a wave of support, and the BBC in Arabic subsequently broadcast a live discussion regarding the article.
In the article, the writer admits that the Arab-Israeli conflict has cost the Arabs dearly, and in recent years people have begun to ask difficult questions, such as: how much have the wars against Israel cost the Arabs? How much has the refusal to recognize Israel since 1948 cost? Why doesn't the Arab world utilize these huge sums to promote education, improve health services and develop the infrastructure? But the most important and difficult question that the Arabs don't even want to hear is : Is Israel the real enemy of the Arabs or perhaps there is a different enemy?
The answers that Abdulateef al-Mulhim gives to these questions are surprising, because he claims that there are worse things than Israel in the Arab world , and that Israel is not responsible for them. These penetrating questions began to disturb him when he saw the photographs of the civil war in Syria, children starving in Yemen, terror incubators in Sinai Peninsula, where development has been neglected, car bombs in Iraq and the destruction of buildings in Libya. The common thread that connects all of these disasters is that they are all the work of those very people who are supposed to be the protectors of the Arab world, who are supposed to build it and develop it, and so the obvious question is: Who is the true enemy of the Arab world.
The cost of the wars with Israel to date is hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of fatalities, and the Arab nation has paid this price because they feel that Israel is their sworn enemy, and it is impossible to recognize it or to live in peace with it. al-Mulhim claims that the truth is that Israel is last on the list of the Arabs' enemies, because the real enemies are corruption, lack of good education, lack of respect for human life and health, lack of freedom, and dictators that have been using the Israeli-Arab conflict in order to oppress their peoples.
The disasters that the dictators have brought upon their peoples are far worse than the wars in the Israeli arena, and the cruelty of those who are supposed to protect the Arabs is far greater than the cruelty of the Israelis. The disaster that has befallen Syria, caused by its ruler, is far beyond our ability to imagine, and in Iraq, those responsible for the destruction is the Iraqis themselves, who are fleeing in droves from a land that is capable of producing 110 billion dollars per year with the export of oil. The president of Tunisia, in broad daylight, stole 13 billion dollars that belonged to its citizens, and the children of Yemen are starving despite their country being one of the most fertile in the world. Lebanon, despite its small size, can't manage is citizenry, and chaos engulfs most parts of the Arab world. None of these problems is the result of the existence of Israel or of the struggle against it.
Al-Mulhim reminds his readers that just one day after the declaration of the state of Israel, on the 15th of May, 1948, Arab armies invaded the nascent Israel and began a war that continued until the 10th of March, 1949. They failed in their effort to annihilate the "Zionist entity". The failure distressed them psychologically and that is why this war is called the "Nakba", "disaster". The Arabs gained nothing, and many Palestinians became refugees. In June, 1967, the Arabs, under the rule of the president of Egypt, Gamal Abd al-Nassar, initiated a the war with Israel and in this war they lost much more territory than the area of Palestine. The nickname for this war is "Naksa", "loss", but the Arabs never admitted their terrible defeat, because it is beyond their capability to admit failure.
And now, the endless "Arab Spring" is in full swing, and the Arab world has no more patience or time to deal with the problems of Palestine and Palestinian refugees, since many Arabs have become refugees themselves and they are now sitting ducks - permanent, stationery targets of their own armies. From Syria alone, four hundred thousand men, women and children, were forced to flee from the inferno of the past twenty months, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have fled from the Land of the Two Rivers and they have been refugees in Arab lands ever since 2003. These refugees fled from their homes and their land not because Israeli jets dropped bombs on them. In Yemen, its residents are experiencing the most severe human tragedy, and the the train of human progress has left the residents of the Sinai Peninsula behind, standing on the platform.
And while the Arabs sink into the quagmire of blood and tears of their own creation, Israel has raced forward into the future with the most advanced institutions of research in the world, leading universities and highly developed infrastructure. Many Arabs aren't aware that the life expectancy of Palestinians in Israel is much more than the life expectancy of Arabs living in Arab countries, and the Arabs in Israel enjoy much more political and social freedom than those living in the Arab world. Even the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation [sic] in the West Bank and Gaza Strip enjoy more political and social rights than citizens of Arab countries. In fact, one of the Israeli judges who sentenced the former president of Israel to prison was an Israeli Palestinian.
The Arab Spring proved to the world that the Palestinians are better off than their brothers who have fought to free them from Israeli rule, and so the time has come to stop the hatred and the wars, and to begin to create a higher standard of living for the future generations of the Arab world.
This concludes the summary of the main points in the article by Abdulateef Mulhim, the Saudi writer.
This article caused a tsunami of response, some in agreeinment and some dissenting. The BBC held a public discussion on the matter where the positions presented were polar opposites. Syrians who support Asad blamed Saudi Arabia, the country where the author lives, for the miserable conditiion that Syria finds itself in, since it is Saudi money that enables the rebels against Asad to acquire weapons and ammunition, and if it weren't for the Saudi funds, Asad would be able to stabilize the government in Syria, and many of those who have been killed in battles would still be alive. But other Syrians publicly thanked the Saudis for supporting the rebels agasint the bloodthirsty dictator who belongs in the trash heap of history.
Other participants agreed with the writer that indeed the Arabs of today have a severe problem of dictatorship and neglect, but nevertheless, Israel is still the greatest enemy just by dint of its existence, because Israel reminds the Arabs every day of what they are not willing to admit: that they have been badly defeated in all of the wars against Israel and that Israel has succeeded to survive and flourish in the Middle East against all odds. The Arabs see Israel's success and envy it, and that's why they hate it, too. When they compare their miserable situation, especially in the past two years, with the highly developed conditions in Israel, they feel that Israel is rubbing salt in their emotional wounds.
Other speakers, who agreed with al-Mulhim, expressed disappointment in the Arab Spring which, when it began at the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, gave the Arabs high hopes for democracy, human rights, political freedom and the elimination of corruption. Today, after almost two years since the Arab Spring burst forth, the situation is worse than before it began. In Egypt the failing economy may wipe out the political achievements of the Muslim Brotherhood, and cause Egypt to become even more dependent on the charity of the "infidels" of Europe and the United States. The Syrian "Spring" has cost, until now, the lives of more than fifty thousand Syrians, butchered by the bloody rule of the 'Alawite sect, which has always presented itself as a model of Arabness and the realization of the lofty ideals of Arab nationalism.
Some of the speakers noted that the struggle in Syria and Iraq have let the sectarian genie out of the bottle, and the Islamist slogans of those who tread the same ideological path of Usama bin Laden are now written more and more on the walls of the ruined buildings in Damascus, in Aleppo, in Adlib, in Homs and in Hama. Iraq has become a boxing ring between Sunnis and Shi'ites, a problem that was swept under the rug in the days of Saddam Hussein.
Al-Mulhim's article places a mirror in front of the Arab world, so that it can see its true face, and this is why the article is important. It is not the same old song of praise that the Arab media so loves to sing with its worn-out slogans and rosy dreams, rather it reflects the bitter reality that the Arabs have created by their own doing, and they are its primary victims.
According to al-Mulhim, Israel is not the Arabs' enemy; rather the Arabs are their own worst enemies. They are the ones who have brought upon themselves the misfortunes, the dictators, the cruelty, the ignorance, the disdain and the neglect , and as long as they accuse Israel of causing their misfortunes they will continue to suffer the bitter consequences of the sad reality that they have caused for themselves. Denial is no solution but only exacerbates the problem, and the Arabs - according to al-Mulhim's claim - cause their own misfortunes and it is not Israel or anyone else that has done it to them.
People such as Abdulateef al-Mulhim are the hope of the Arab world.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar (Mordechai.Kedar@biu.ac.il) is an Israeli scholar of Arabic and Islam, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and the director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel. He specializes in Islamic ideology and movements, the political discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic mass media, and the Syrian domestic arena.

Translated from Hebrew by Sally Zahav with the permission of the author.

Source: The article is published in the framework of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel. Also published in Makor Rishon, a Hebrew weekly newspaper.

Obama’s greatest foreign policy error was the same one that had been
made by Bush and by numerous past administrations. The error was that
the problem was not Islam, but Islamic violence. It was Obama however
who took that error to its logical conclusion by pursuing a foreign
policy meant to part Islamists from their violent tendencies by allowing
them to win without the need for terrorism.

Violence, the thinking in diplomatic circles went, was inherently
alarming and destabilizing. When Islamists don’t take over, they move to
the West, preach radical theology, gather up followers and begin
blowing things up. But let them take over their own home countries and
they’ll no longer have any reason to draw up maps of London and New
York, not when they’re beheading adulterers and burning churches back
home.

The Arab Spring was to the Middle East what the betrayal of
Czechoslovakia to the Nazis and the betrayal of the rest of Eastern
Europe to the Communists was to 20th century European history. It was
the moment when all the diplomatic folly that had come before it came
together in one great historical instant of national and international
betrayal.

The diplomatic wunderkinds had never taken Islamist theology
seriously, just as their predecessors had not considered the possibility
that the Bolsheviks might be serious about their world revolution. And
they had also failed to recognize that Islamic terrorism was not only a
means to power, but also an end in and of itself, a way of harnessing
the endless violence and instability in desert societies and turning
them into power and profit.

What every Middle Eastern leader has always understood is that the
violence, call it raids, terrorism, guerrilla warfare, gang activity,
sectarian militias, military coups, desert banditry, was never going
away. It was the tiger and the clever leader rides the tiger, rather
than ending up inside it, harnessing and directing the violence, to
remain in power.

Islam is a religion built around that violence, sanctifying it as a
religious principle, and thus taking it out of the realm of Fitna and
into the realm of Jihad. The difference between the two is a matter of
theology and that theology is a matter of perspective. What is banditry
and what is a holy war is a matter of where you’re standing and which
way the bullets are flying.

The Islamists might be able to direct the violence, but they could no
more shut it down than any of their secular predecessors could. They
could kill their enemies, but only by unleashing the tiger on them and
when the killing was done, they would still be left with a hungry tiger
looking around for his next meal. So the Islamists, like the Saudis,
were bound to fuse religion with realpolitik by making sure that the
tigers were pointed our way.

Even if their violence were only a means to an end, the end would not
come when every Middle Eastern country was run by Islamist governments.
For one thing there would never be a means of agreeing on what a truly
Islamist government was. The reactionary impetus of Wahhabism leads to
an endless series of reforms meant to recreate a lost 7th century
theological paradise by purging those damnable 8th century theological
innovators.

To many Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood is just Mubarak with a
beard. To other Salafists, those Salafists are just the Muslim
Brotherhood with an untrimmed beard. After overthrowing Mubarak to end
the perception that the United States supports un-Islamic dictators,
maintaining ties with the Muslim Brotherhood would invite attacks from
those Salafists in the hopes of ending US support for the Brotherhood,
resetting that foreign policy accomplishment to zero. And the
Brotherhood would wink and nod at those attacks to maintain its Islamist
street cred and keep the violence going in the other direction.

As the attacks of September 11, 2012 showed us, the effect of putting
the Islamists in charge of the Arab Spring countries was not to relieve
tensions or improve America’s image, but to make it easier for
Jihadists to launch attacks on America. And the argument advanced by
Obama and so many others, that it was our support for dictators that
inspired terrorists, had come to nothing. As Carter had done in Iran,
Obama had stood behind the Islamists and against the “dictators”, only
to have the newly Islamist dictators kick him in the face, first through
mobs carrying out attacks against American diplomatic facilities under
the guise of plausible deniability, and then through bolder
confrontations.

But finally, the seizure of one Muslim country or two of them or a
dozen of them is not the end of the Islamists. Islamists don’t recognize
borders or national identities, no more than the Communists did. Their
objective is not a flag of their own, but the territorial expansion of
their ideology.

The presence of Muslims in the West makes the takeover of Western
countries necessary for the same reason that the takeover of Muslim
countries by Islamists was necessary. Muslim immigration to the West
creates a mandate to impose Islamic law on the West. Western leaders
react to that by offering to accept some elements of Sharia into their
legal system. This moves the process into the second stage, the one that
the Arab Spring countries were under, practicing an imperfect version
of Islamic law that the Islamists were then compelled to “perfect.”

Everything that the West has done to appease Muslims has worked as
well as a man jumping into a tiger cage and pouring meat sauce all over
his body. Each act of appeasement only makes Muslim violence necessary
and inevitable. Every increase in the Islamic footprint in the West
attracts Islamists intent on expanding and purifying that footprint, as
they have done in their own countries. The more the West takes in
Islamic populations and laws, the more Islamists are compelled to bring
Diaspora Muslim populations and laws into full compliance with their
theology.

Obama’s foreign policy aimed at allowing the Islamists to win. He
ignored the Iranian protesters against an Islamist state, while rushing
to support the Islamist protesters in Egypt and Tunisia. The Islamists
won and September 11, 2012 was a consequence of those victories. And it
won’t be the last consequence.

As Chamberlain learned of Hitler and as the Democrats learned of the
Commies, there is no finite amount of concessions, no set range of
territories that can be traded in exchange for peace. The Nazis and
Communists wanted the world because their goals were not confined to
mere territories, but to the enslavement of billions to create an ideal
world for the benefit of their chosen elites. Islam is interested in the
same thing.

Islamists don’t want Egypt, Syria or Palestine. And they certainly
won’t settle for them. No more than Hitler settled for Czechoslovakia or
Stalin settled for Poland. They will accept their conquests in bites,
but they will never stop biting, chewing and swallowing until they run
up against a force that will not allow them to advance and expand
further.

Obama tried to divide violent Islamism from political Islamism,
giving the Islamists what they wanted without violence, to eliminate the
need for a War on Terror. But all he accomplished was to give Islamist
violence a bigger base and more resources to work with. Islam is
inherently violent. A non-violent Islamic victory doesn’t end the
violence; it only expands its capacity for violence.Daniel Greenfield Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/obamas-greatest-foreign-policy-error/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

A mysterious explosion at a state-owned
military factory complex rocked the southern reaches of the Sudanese
capital Khartoum early Wednesday, prompting the Sudanese government once
again to blame Israel for violating its sovereignty and attacking its
facilities.

Sudanese Information Minister Ahmed Belal
Osman told reporters on Wednesday that four aircraft hit the Yarmouk
complex before dawn, setting off a huge blast that caused an explosion
and fire that killed two people.

"Four planes coming from the east bombed the
Yarmouk industrial complex," Belal said. "They used sophisticated
technology [to penetrate Sudanese airspace and avoid radars].” Belal
said that parts of the complex which produced "conventional weapons"
were completely destroyed, while other parts were only partially
damaged.

"We reserve our right to respond in a time and
place of our choosing," Belal added. He admitted that Sudan lacked the
military means equivalent to Israel's, but said it reserved the right to
respond with the means at its disposal. The minister stressed that the
factory was not producing prohibited weapons, had no underground or
hidden sections, and that Sudan had the national right to produce
conventional weapons.

Around
300 people gathered at the courtyard of a government building where the
Sudanese cabinet was in an emergency meeting, shouting, "Death to
Israel" and "Remove Israel from the map."

"Israel is a country of injustice that needs
to be deterred," Vice President Ali Osman Taha, standing next to
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, told the crowd. "This attack only
strengthens our firmness."

Osman said that Sudan intends to file an
official complaint to the UN Security Council (UNSC), and also told the
BBC that his country is planning more decisive action against Israeli
interests saying they are legitimate targets.

The minister of media said in his press conference in
Khartoum that 60 percent of Al-Yarmook ammunition factory was completely
destroyed while 40 percent was partially destroyed. He revealed that
the government had plans to relocate the factory to an area outside of
the capital "but the Israelis knew this and decided to attack
preemptively," the AllAfrica.com website reported.

According to
the Al Hayat newspaper, the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum shut its door on
Tuesday shortly before the attack, prompting speculation that the
Americans had prior knowledge of the planned attack on the weapons
factory and feared a response on its mission.

Belal, referring to a 2009 attack on an arms
convoy in a Red Sea province in eastern Sudan, said, "We are now certain
that this flagrant attack was authorized by the same State of Israel.
The main purpose is to frustrate our military capabilities and stop any
development there and ultimately weaken our national sovereignty."

Israel believes Sudan is a conduit for arms
shipments through Egypt to Gaza's Hamas rulers, as well as other
terrorist groups operating in the region. Israel does not comment
officially on the issue.

Belal said the complex produced conventional weapons, and that "Sudan reserves the right to strike back at Israel."

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council,
Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman called the attack a
"blatant violation" of the U.N. charter and called for condemnation from
the world body.

Belal said an analysis of rocket debris and other material had shown that the attack was engineered by Israel.

Israeli officials did not respond to requests
for comment on Sudan's allegations. When asked by Israel's Channel 2
News about Sudan's accusations, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said: "There
is nothing I can say about this subject."

Amos Gilad, head of the Political-Diplomatic
Bureau at the Defense Ministry, refused to comment on Israeli
involvement in the explosion, but touched on Sudan's involvement in
aiding and abetting terrorist organizations.

"There are many versions to this story and
there is no point in getting into it," Gilad said. "The flames are
obvious, because they came from that place. Regarding Sudan's role, it
is a dangerous terror state, and regarding what happened there exactly
time is needed to understand it," he said.

While not confirming nor denying reports that
Israel attacked the Khartoum factory, Vice Prime Minister Moshe [Bogey]
Ya'alon said Israel "would not shed a tear" over the reported attack.

Shabtai Shavit, former Mossad chief told
Israel Radio that Sudan has become a thoroughfare for Iranian weapons
from the sea into Africa and the Middle East, including Egypt and Gaza.
Sudan is a country with a weak unstable government with many regions
under the control of tribal warlords, so it is easier for Iran to work
there.

If Israel was indeed behind the attack, the
distance to the weapons factory in Khartoum is greater than the distance
to the underground Fordo uranium enrichment facility in Iran.

The powerful blast at the complex sent exploding ammunition flying through the air, causing panic among residents.

Abdelgadir Mohammed, 31, who lives near the
factory, said a loud roar of what they believed was a plane prompted him
and his brother to leave their house around midnight to check it out.

"At first we thought it was more than one
plane. Then we thought it was a plane crashing because of how sharp the
sound was," Mohammed said. "Then we saw a flash of light, and after it
came a really loud sound. It was an explosion."

He said he heard three distinct explosions.

Mohammed said the explosion caused panic among
the residents of the heavily populated, low-income neighborhood. Many
fled to open spaces, fearing their homes were collapsing. He said
ammunition flew out of the factory into the air and fell on homes.

Thick smoke blackened the sky over the complex, and firefighters fought the blaze for hours.

In New York, Sudan's U.N. Ambassador,
Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman, called on the U.N. Security Council to
condemn the attack, accusing Israel of meddling in its internal affairs
and providing support to rebel groups.

"Four Israeli airplanes invaded our air space
and perpetrated this heinous attack," Osman told a Security Council
session on Darfur. "We reject such aggression and expect the Security
Council to condemn this attack because it is a blatant violation of the
concepts of peace and security and of the principles and purposes of the
charter and United Nation and it jeopardizes peace and security in the
entire region and not just in Sudan."

The Cairo-based Arab League said it was
closely following the fallout after the attack. Deputy Arab League
Secretary-General Ahmed bin Helli said Sudanese officials were in touch
with the League and had provided initial reports about Israel's alleged
involvement. "We are working to verify them," he said.

Sudanese activists on social media websites
criticized the government for placing a factory with such large
quantities of ammunition in a residential area.

Meanwhile, opposition elements in Sudan
claimed Wednesday that the weapons factory belonged to Iran's
Revolutionary Guard. Sudanese government officials in the past have not
specifically denied that Iran has military factories in their country,
and foreign media outlets have reported that Revolutionary Guard troops
have trained the Sudanese military.

The independent Sudanese newspaper Rai
al-Shabaab revealed in 2010 that Iran had built a covert facility inside
the Sudanese Military Industrial Complex near Khartoum. The factory,
according to the same report, manufactured arms for terrorist
organizations working with Iran, including Islamic Jihad and Hamas in
the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon and radical Islamist groups in
Yemen and Somalia.

Al-Shabaab was shut down by government
authorities following the report and the paper's editor was arrested and
charged with espionage. A report in Foreign Policy magazine in 2010
examining Iranian activity in Sudan claimed that Israel knew of the
factory's existence.

Photographs from the explosion area,
meanwhile, showed weapons parts scattered about, including metal
fragments from 122mm rockets and larger ones, such as the Fajr-3 rocket
manufactured by Iran.

The Yarmouk weapons complex was built in 1996.
Sudan prided itself in having a way to produce its own ammunition and
weapons despite international sanctions.

Yarmouk is one of two known state-owned weapons manufacturing facilities in the Sudanese capital.

Jonah Leff of the Geneva-based Small Arms
Survey told The Associated Press that the location of the two factories
was "certainly a hazard" to Khartoum's population if the weapons inside
were not properly maintained or secured.

A September report from the Small Arms Survey
said there was evidence from weapons packaging found in Darfur and in
South Kordofan that arms and ammunition from China were being exported
to Yarmouk and then transported to Kenya and Tanzania.

Leff said that although the Small Arms Survey had
documented Sudanese military stocks of Iranian weapons and ammunition,
there was no evidence that Iranian weapons were being assembled or
manufactured in the two Khartoum factories.

Officials have already speculated that al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was involved in the Benghazi attack, but CNN reports al-Qaeda in Iraq may be linked as well. AQI has been regaining strength since U.S. troops withdrew last year:

U.S. intelligence believes that assailants connected to al Qaeda in
Iraq were among the core group that attacked the diplomatic mission in
Benghazi, a U.S. government official told CNN.

That would represent the second al Qaeda affiliate associated with
the deadly September 11 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher
Stevens and three other Americans. …

The latest intelligence suggests the core group of suspects from the
first wave of the attack on the Benghazi mission numbered between 35 to
40. Around a dozen of the attackers are believed to be connected to
either al Qaeda in Iraq or al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the
government official said.

The attack had two waves: The first targeted the main compound where
Stevens and another diplomatic official were believed killed. A second
stage a few hours later involved an annex building approximately a mile
away.

The Obama administration is still trying to slowly back away from its “spontaneous reaction” line, pivoting to the claim
it was an “opportunistic attack” that didn’t require a lot of
pre-planning. Whether it was “opportunistic” or not doesn’t really
matter, but it’s a way for the administration to cling to a small shred
of credibility after initially telling the public it wasn’t premeditated
or preplanned. Either way, if there were a dozen attackers directly
linked to two different al-Qaeda affiliates, as CNN reports, that’s
still an al-Qaeda attack, no matter how “opportunistic” or “spontaneous”
the administration wants to argue it was.Good thing President Obama’s foreign policy has “devastated” al-Qaeda, right John Kerry?Alana GoodmanSource: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/10/25/cnn-al-qaeda-in-iraq-may-be-linked-to-benghazi/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The fighting in Syria has already spilled over
the border into Lebanon, threatening the fragile sectarian balance
holding that country together. Cross-border attacks have become
customary, with the Syrian Army shelling and shooting into Lebanese
villages that it says are harboring Syrian rebels.

Across from El Hermel in northeastern Lebanon and
inside Syrian territory, a string of villages inhabited by Shiites has
been clashing with majority-Sunni villages that back the Syrian
opposition forces in the countryside of Qusayr, on the outskirts of
Homs. Hizbullah is interfering directly and militarily in Qusayr under
the pretext of protecting the Shiite villages in the area. It currently
claims control of 18 villages along the widest part of the Orontes River
Basin.

The French Mandatory authorities delineated the
Lebanon-Syria border in the years following the creation of Greater
Lebanon in 1920, but the border was never finalized. What is happening
on the ground could be called de facto demarcation since Hizbullah has a presence in the string of Shiite villages (annexing them de facto to Lebanon), while the Free Syrian Army is present in most Sunni villages, thus annexing them to Syria.

Hizbullah appears to be carving out a
20-kilometer (12-mile) border corridor to the Syrian Alawite enclave on
the coast. Hizbullah appears to be seeking to control strategic access
to the Orontes River Basin in Syria and Lebanon to form a contiguous
Alawite-Shiite mini-state. Yet the Shiite belt would likely face a major
challenge from Sunnis on both sides of the border.

For the first time, Hizbullah is “exporting” its
military know-how and might for use against Arab neighbors, in order to
respond to Tehran’s strategic scheme to protect the Assad regime from
falling. But by doing so, Hizbullah has alienated the Sunni majority in
Syria and also in Lebanon. It would be fair to assess that in case
Assad’s regime falls, Hizbullah will also have to fight for its life in
the Lebanese context.

Hizbullah has been fighting for years to prove
its “Lebanese” credentials. Fighting alongside the Alawite regime has
turned Hizbullah back into what it really is: just another Lebanese
armed militia, a Shiite army at the service of its patrons, sponsors,
and protectors in Tehran.

The Syrian Conflict Spills into Lebanon

As the fighting in Syria intensifies, the conflict has already
spilled over the border into Lebanon, threatening the fragile sectarian
balance holding that country together and sparking yet another
blood-spattered internal conflict. Although the clashes are still
limited to the ill-defined border areas between the two countries and in
the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli, still, the latest car bombing in
Beirut on October 19 (the first since 2008) which targeted senior
Lebanese intelligence official Wissam al-Hassan, who led the
investigation that implicated Syria and Hizbullah in the assassination
of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, was most probably the result of
Syrian–Hizbullah cooperation and could herald an expansion of the
domestic Lebanese conflict between supporters and opponents of the Assad
regime. Hassan was the brains behind the uncovering of a bomb plot that
led to the arrest and indictment in August 2012 of former Lebanese
minister Michel Samaha, an ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, in a
setback for Damascus and its Lebanese allies including Hizbullah.

These events are serious enough to cause alarm among
Lebanese politicians and the public that the military situation might
escalate and the country might find itself in civil strife for
sheltering opposition rebels within its borders.

Since the beginning of the rebellion in Syria, the
Syrian regime has repeatedly requested that Lebanon secure its borders
from smugglers, to no avail. As a result, cross-border attacks have
become customary, with the Syrian Army shelling and shooting into
Lebanese villages that it says are harboring Syrian rebels. The Syrian
army has strengthened its positions along Lebanon’s northeastern border
to prevent weapons smuggling and the infiltration of fighters. Syria’s
opposition groups have indeed made use of this largely porous territory.
Many of those fleeing from Syria or wounded in the violence have been
brought across the border into Lebanon. Since the uprising began, Syrian
security forces have slipped into various border towns and villages in
pursuit of what they call “armed terrorist groups.”

The Lebanese government has made numerous complaints to the Syrian
authorities but the incursions have not stopped. Lebanese President
Michel Suleiman asked his foreign minister in July 2012 to send an
official letter of complaint to the Syrian ambassador in Beirut, but the
complaint got tangled up in sectarian and regional alliances, a common
feature of Lebanese politics. Lebanon’s foreign minister, Adnan Mansour,
is a member of Amal, a Shiite political party that is a strong
supporter of the Syrian government, and the letter he ultimately sent to
the ambassador fell far short of a formal complaint.1

Lebanon’s northeastern
border with Syria was once calm, with smugglers regularly ferrying food
and fuel between the two countries. But now the dynamics have changed:
Fighters and weapons have replaced consumer goods as the hot
commodities, and fighting erupts frequently in the once quiet border
villages. Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters easily cross into the country
and can move freely to carry out operations or move men and arms. The
region befits these activities with its heavy tree cover, borders that
are not clearly demarcated, and Sunni residents who are generally
supportive of their aims.

Map: CIA Factbook

Flashpoint Shiite Villages Inside Syria

However, across from El
Hermel in northeastern Lebanon and inside Syrian territory, a string of
villages inhabited by Shiites has been clashing with majority-Sunni
villages that back the Syrian opposition forces in the countryside of
Qusayr, on the outskirts of Homs, and there has been a series of mutual
kidnappings between the groups. Hizbullah is interfering directly and
militarily in Qusayr under the pretext of protecting the Shiite villages
in the area. Hizbullah has deployed its combatants in the upper Brital
villages of Tfeil and Maaraboun, and it also has men in Zabadani and
Sarghaya, where there are regular clashes between the rebel Free Syrian
Army and Assad’s troops. In 23 Shiite villages (mostly inhabited by
members of the Hamadeh, Jaafar and Zeaiter clans) which once housed
21,000-30,000 people, less than half of the original residents remain;
the rest were forced out or fled. In fact, Hizbullah forces have been
assigned to protect and control the Orontes River Basin – a strategic
area that links the Syrian hinterland to the port of Tripoli in northern
Lebanon. Control of this area would, of course, prevent the FSA from
smuggling arms, ammunition, and fighters into Syria from Lebanon.

Map: Al-Manar

Hizbullah has been using heavy weapons including artillery and
rockets in the Qusayr area in an effort to dislodge FSA forces from Abu
Hori, Al Nahiyah, Sakarjah and Al Burhaniyah, as it seeks to prevent the
FSA from enjoying direct territorial continuity with Lebanon. It was
even reported that Hizbullah has taken control of Syrian villages and
towns in that same area such as Zeyta, Hawik, El Hamam, Al Safsafah, Al
Fadiliyah and the groves of Al Nazariyah. Hizbullah currently claims
control of 18 villages along the widest part of the Orontes River Basin:
Bab al-Hawa, Wadi Hanna, Rabla, Matraba, Al Jadaliyya, Balluza, Al
Huwayik, Ghawgharan, Al Summaqiyyat, Al Hamam, Al Safiyyah, Zeita, Al
Fadiliyya, Al Qarniyya, Al Misriyya, Dibbin, Al Suwayidyya and Al Hush.
The most Hizbullah activity in Syria has occurred in this area,
particularly around the border town of Al Qusayr.2

The Syrian rebel forces have displaced the occupants in order to
create a smuggling link from the Homs countryside to Wadi Khaled and
north Lebanon, which tends to back the Syrian uprising. This forced
displacement prompted Hizbullah to confront the opposition with heavy
force, driving the Free Syrian Army to focus their smuggling on the area
between Masharih al-Qaa and Upper Aarsal.

Hizbullah officials have repeatedly denied that their group has
troops on the ground in Syria. However, on October 9, Hizbullah had to
face an unanticipated event: Ali Hussein Nassif (alias Abu Abbas),
commander and coordinator of Hizbullah’s forces in Syria, was killed in
Qusayr, deep in Syrian territory, prompting further speculation about
Hizbullah’s role in the fighting. According to reports from that area,
Hizbullah suffered severe losses to the FSA, which succeeded in
repelling Hizbullah attacks combined with Syrian Air Force strikes
against the strategic town of Joussiyeh.

Abu Abbas was treated like a martyr and a ceremonious funeral was
held in his hometown of Boudiyah (on the border with Syria). In his
eulogy, Mohammad Yazbek, head of the Judiciary Council and member of the
Shura Council (Hizbullah’s highest decision-making authority), said
that Abu Abbas had died in Syria protecting Lebanese citizens who live
there (!). In his own words, Yazbek described those Lebanese as
“oppressed and as such who have been abandoned by the state (Lebanon)
and government” – a typical Shiite wording used to describe the Shiites
living in Lebanon.3

According to local sources in the Homs countryside, Hizbullah and the
Syrian opposition have 5,000 fighters each. Both sides have kidnapped
members of their rivals, and there have been three rounds of fighting
between clusters of villages since September 2011. The Free Syrian Army
accused Hizbullah of “occupying” six Syrian towns near the
Lebanese-Syrian border including Joussiyeh and Al Qusayr, where the
Hizbullah commander found his death.

The Lebanon-Syria Border Was Never Finalized

No doubt, the cross-border conflict also stems from the fact that the
border remains in dispute in numerous places. Former UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan conceded that “there seems to be no
official record of a formal international boundary agreement between
Lebanon and the Syrian Arab Republic.” The continued ambiguity over the
Lebanon-Syria border is due to the indifference of the Lebanese state to
its impoverished frontier regions and Syria’s reluctance to accept the
notion of a separate Lebanon. Syria has always considered Lebanon to be a
province of Syria.

Greater Lebanon was created by France to be a “safe haven” for the
Maronite population of Mt. Lebanon, an area with a Maronite majority
that had enjoyed varying degrees of autonomy under the Ottoman Empire.
However, in addition to Mount Lebanon, Greater Lebanon included other,
mainly Muslim, regions that were not part of the Maronite administrative
province; hence, the word “greater.” Those regions correspond today to
north Lebanon, south Lebanon, the Beqaa Valley, and Beirut. The capital
of Greater Lebanon was Beirut. The new state was granted a flag merging
the French flag with the cedar of Mt. Lebanon.

The French Mandatory authorities delineated the Lebanon-Syria border
in the years following the creation of Greater Lebanon in 1920, drawing
detailed maps of the frontier in 1934. The border was supposed to follow
the perimeters of four ex-Ottoman sub-provinces: Akkar in the north,
Baalbek in the east, and Hasbayya and Rashayya in the southeast. For the
sake of convenience, the boundaries were defined by the geographical
features of the Nahr al-Kabir in the north and the peaks of the
Anti-Lebanon mountain range and Mount Hermon in the east.4

But these natural boundaries often conflicted with property rights,
where Lebanese-owned land ended up inside Syria and vice versa, and with
local demographics. For example, the village of Tufayl, which
longitudinally lies just east of central Damascus, is connected to the
Bekaa Valley by a narrow finger of Lebanese territory that projects
eastward over the Anti-Lebanon range and into the semi-desert north of
the Syrian capital. Tufayl was included in Lebanon due to its population
being Shiite, therefore more closely connected to their co-religionists
in the Bekaa than the Sunnis and Aramaic-speaking Greek Catholics who
are their immediate neighbors in Syria.5

Muslims in Greater Lebanon rejected the new state upon its creation.
The continuous Muslim demand for reunification with Syria eventually
brought about an armed conflict between Muslims and Christians in 1958
when Muslim Lebanese wanted to join the newly proclaimed United Arab
Republic, while Christians were strongly opposed.

In the decades after Lebanon and Syria gained independence in the
1940s, both countries formed several committees to settle border
disputes, all of them unsuccessful,6 and the notoriously porous border remained a source of contention between Lebanon and Syria:

There is at least 460 km2 of Lebanon occupied by Syria.

There are dozens of smuggling passages in operation, all used to import goods and infiltrate foreign fighters and weapons.

There are numerous Syrian Army camps inside Lebanese territory.7

The Free Syrian Army and Hizbullah Move to Protect Their Interests

In late 2008, Lebanon and Syria made the historic decision to
establish diplomatic relations for the first time, but the border issue
was left open. The beginning of the rebellion against Assad put an end
to any possible cooperation for the time being on the issue.

Left with no alternative, the FSA and Hizbullah have
decided to act in order to protect their interests. In fact, what is
happening on the ground could in a way be called de facto demarcation since Hizbullah has a presence in the string of Shiite villages (annexing them de facto
to Lebanon), while the FSA is present in most Sunni villages, thus
annexing them to Syria. The fighting is therefore taking place in the
mixed villages or in those which are vital for maintaining geographical
homogeneity in the Sunni and Shiite areas. When the fighting ends, it is
likely that the demarcation of the ill-defined border will have been
facilitated by the events of today.

Hizbullah appears to have a contingency plan to carve out and defend a
20-kilometer (12-mile) border corridor to the Syrian Alawite enclave on
the coast. This is a difficult endeavor because Hizbullah does not
exercise authority in Sunni-dominated northern Lebanon. Instead,
Hizbullah appears to be seeking to control strategic access to the
Orontes River Basin in Syria and Lebanon to form a contiguous
Alawite-Shiite mini-state. Controlling the bulge of the river basin
would theoretically allow Hizbullah to pool resources with an Alawite
enclave in the northern Bekaa while the organization attempts to hold
its ground in the southern Beirut suburbs and southern Lebanon.8
The purported plan to build this sectarian fortress is fraught with
complications, especially since the Shiite belt would likely face a
major challenge from Sunnis on both sides of the border. But in
contingency planning, one must hope for the best and prepare for the
worst. Hizbullah is evidently doing just that.

Hizbullah’s direct participation in the fighting in Syria has created
a precedent: For the first time since its establishment, Hizbullah is
“exporting” its military know-how and might for use against Arab
neighbors, in order to respond to Tehran’s strategic scheme to protect
the Assad regime from falling. But by doing so, Hizbullah has alienated
the Sunni majority in Syria (and also in Lebanon) which, in the event
that Assad falls, will probably strive to make Hizbullah bear the
consequences of its support for the Alawite regime. Signals in this
direction are already being sent in the media, while Hizbullah itself
has stepped up its preparations in the Dahiyah area of south Beirut in
anticipation of such consequences. It would be fair to assess that in
case Assad’s regime falls, Hizbullah will also have to fight for its
life in the Lebanese context. For this reason, it seems that Hizbullah’s
involvement in the fighting in Syria is crucial. Hizbullah has to win
the war there in order to survive in Lebanon.

Finally, Hizbullah has been fighting for years to prove its
“Lebanese” credentials. Fighting alongside the Alawite regime has turned
Hizbullah back into what it really is: just another Lebanese armed
militia, a Shiite army at the service of its patrons, sponsors, and
protectors in Tehran. Its aims remain sectarian and not national or
supra-national – namely, fighting a Shiite war. This is far from what it
claimed to be – a pan-Islamic movement to fight Israel and the West.

When
Barack Obama first ascended to the presidency, his American supporters
exulted: now that the hated Dubya Bush was out of the picture, the world
would finally “like” us again! It’s as if they were all in junior high
school and considered the United States a Facebook page, and nothing was
more important than having the whole world click our “like” button. Now
that the end of Obama’s tenure approaches, it is abundantly clear
exactly which world leaders “like” him and why they want him to have a
second term.

After four years of apologizing for American arrogance, alternately either bowing to or embracing Islamic fundamentalists, insulting our oldest and closest allies like England and Israel, and driving
other allies out of power altogether, Obama has indeed won over a
certain sector of the world – the sector comprised of the most
America-hating dictators on the planet. And they “like” Obama because he
has diminished, if not crippled, American economic and military might,
and because his goal conforms with theirs – to move us into a post-American world in which we are no longer the lead actor on the world stage. In short, he has alienated our allies and embraced our enemies.

Case in point: Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, who at the end of
September publicly announced his support for our Saboteur-in-Chief’s
reelection bid. “If I were American, I’d vote for Obama,” Chavez said in
a television interview. Of course he would – Chavez is a power-mad
socialist. He’s certainly not going to get behind capitalist Romney and
his Ayn Rand-inspired running mate Paul Ryan. The America-bashing,
Hezbollah-supporting thug also pronounced Obama to be “a good guy” and
speculated correctly that if Obama were Venezuelan, “I think… he’d vote
for Chavez.”

Another example: Mariela Castro, the government-official daughter of
Cuban dictator Raul Castro, younger brother of the brutal Fidel, proclaimed
in June her support for Obama during a visit to the U.S. “I believe
that Obama is a fair man… As a citizen of the world, I would like him to
win,” she said in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. She
didn’t explain what a citizen of the world is, but it sounds like a
typical Obama supporter’s grandiose fantasy. “Given the choices, I
prefer Obama,” because he might be inclined to lift the trade embargo
against the oppressive Castro regime.

She felt that Obama has been hampered in his efforts to effect
change. “He wants to do much more than what he’s been able to do,” she
said. Oh, there’s no question about that. But given a second term, Obama
will certainly pull out all the stops to implement his radical agenda
as thoroughly as possible.

“I believe that Obama needs another opportunity and he needs greater
support to move forward with his projects and with his ideas, which I
believe come from the bottom of his heart,” Castro said. Actually, his
projects and ideas come more from a lifelong indoctrination by radical
ideologues like Marx, Alinsky, Muhammad, Bill Ayers, and Rev. Wright.

Then there is Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has eliminated most
elections in his country, monopolized all major media and destroyed the
political party system. Now the dictator has extended his endorsement, pointing out that Obama is “a genuine person” who “really wants to change much for the better.”

Speaking to Russia’s state-run RT television channel, he said a
second Obama term could help solve disputes over missile defense,
whereas Mitt Romney has said that Russia was America’s “number one
geopolitical foe.” Putin said such talk was merely “mistaken” election
rhetoric. He warned that a Romney victory could complicate efforts to
resolve Russia’s opposition to a missile defense shield. “Our American
partners tell us, ‘It’s not [aimed] against you.’ But what if the
president of the United States will be Mr. Romney, who considers us
enemy No. 1?”

It was only a few months earlier that Obama was caught on camera reassuring Putin’s predecessor Dmitry Medvedev that he would “have more flexibility” to deal with such contentious issues after he wins his last election. “I will transmit this information to Vladimir,” said Putin’s number two.

Then of course, there is the United Nations. Its Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights, Ben Emmerson, has warned
Americans not to elect Mitt Romney president; doing so would be “a
democratic mandate for torture,” because Romney has refused to rule out
the use of waterboarding in enhanced interrogations of terrorism
detainees, a practice Obama ended (which didn’t stop him from taking
advantage of the technique’s success, under Bush, in obtaining
information that ultimately enabled Obama to claim his lone foreign
policy achievement – the elimination of Osama bin Laden).

“The reintroduction of torture under a Romney administration would
significantly increase the threat levels to [Americans] at home and
abroad,” Emmerson said. “Such a policy, if adopted, would expose the
American people to risks the Obama administration is not currently
exposing them to.” So the UN supports Obama because Romney is less
likely to appease international bullies. No wonder that organization has
been so ineffective for decades.

Although the Muslim Brotherhood has not issued an official public
statement of support for one candidate or the other, Obama has made his support
for Islam and the Brotherhood crystal clear from day one of his
presidency, so it’s difficult to imagine that that support will not be
reciprocated.

As my screenwriter friend Robert Avrech points out on his Seraphic Secret blog, Iranian madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also has weighed in on the election, issuing a warning
that Romney might steal the election through voting machines that
“manufacture election outcomes.” Ahmadinejad also claimed that polls
favoring Romney or even showing him neck-and-neck with Obama are
fraudulent, and predicts black Americans will riot if Obama loses.

When some of the world’s worst current dictators openly get behind
your campaign, it should be a very clear red flag for American voters
about your character and your policies. With friends like these, America
doesn’t need any more enemies – certainly not in the White House
itself.Mark TapsonSource: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-tapson/with-friends-like-these/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Emir of Qatar's visit to the
Gaza Strip is a huge diplomatic victory for Hamas and a severe blow to
the moderate Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority. The emir did
not come to the Gaza Strip to try to persuade Hamas to abandon terror
and recognize Israel's right to exist. Nor did he come to the Gaza Strip
to tell Hamas to endorse democracy and stop its oppressive measures
against Palestinians, especially women.

The U.S. Administration has sought to downplay the significance of
this week's visit to the Gaza Strip by the Emir of Qatar, Hamad
al-Thani.

"We have seen the reports that Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa visits Gaza
today on a humanitarian mission," State Department spokeswoman Victoria
Nuland said. "We share Qatar's deep concern for the welfare of the
Palestinian people, including those residing in Gaza."

Many Palestinians, especially the Palestinian Authority leadership in
the West Bank, do not share the U.S. Administration's position
regarding the emir's visit.

Palestinian Authority leaders do not see the visit as a "humanitarian mission," but as an attempt to strengthen Hamas.

In fact, the high-profile visit of the emir and his wife to the Gaza Strip was anything but a "humanitarian mission."

This was a visit that has political and economic implications, not only for the Palestinians, but for the entire region as well.

True, the emir promised to invest $400 million in various projects in
the Gaza Strip. It remains to be seen if the Qatari ruler will fulfill
his promise.

The timing of the visit raises many questions and sheds light as to the emir's true motives.Qatar has always been supportive not only of Hamas, but Muslim Brotherhood and many jihadi organizations.

If Qatar really had "deep concern for the welfare of the Palestinian people," where was the emir during the past seven years?

As the emir himself pointed out during the visit, it was the
so-called Arab Spring -- which has seen the rise of Islamists to power
in a number of Arab countries over the past two years - that paved the
way for his visit to the Gaza Strip.

"Were it not for the Egyptian revolution and President Mohamed Morsi," the emir said, "the visit would not have taken place."

The emir came to the Gaza Strip to offer not only financial aid to
Hamas, but also moral and political backing. The visit, the first of its
kind by a head of state to the Gaza Strip since Hamas seized control
over the area in 2007, was aimed at helping the Islamist movement break
the state of isolation in which it has been since then.

The emir did not come to the Gaza Strip to try to persuade Hamas to
abandon terror and recognize Israel's right to exist. Nor did he come to
the Gaza Strip to tell Hamas to endorse democracy and stop its
oppressive measures against Palestinians, particularly women.

The emir's visit is a huge diplomatic victory for Hamas and a severe
blow to moderate Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian leaders in the West Bank were quick to express deep
disappointment with the emir's visit, rightly arguing that it would only
enhance Hamas's standing and empower the radical camp among the
Palestinians.

The emir's visit also means that the Gaza Strip has become a separate
Palestinian entity that has no link to the West Bank's Palestinian
Authority, and which is capable of conducting its running its own
economy and foreign policy.

The visit has actually solidified the split between the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, turning Abbas's effort to establish an independent
Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines into a fantasy; if he tried to
establish a Palestinian state on the West Bank alone, would be accused
of "abandoning" the dream of creating a full, united, Palestinian state,
and of dividing Palestine into two states.

Finally, the emir's visit to the Gaza Strip also serves Qatar's wish
of becoming a major player in the region as well as in the Israeli-Arab
conflict. Syria, Iran and Egypt, countries which once used to have
enormous influence over Hamas, have been pushed aside by Qatar's ruler
and his promise of big checks.Khaled Abu ToamehSource: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3411/state-dept-hamasCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.